The Vatican on Tuesday sought to defend Pope Benedict XVI against criticism that his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Monday was a disappointment coming from a German who experienced the Nazi terror firsthand.
But in seeking to clarify the pope’s wartime past, the Vatican further muddied the waters, appearing to revise ”” then retract ”” Benedict’s wartime history in the middle of his first visit to Israel as pontiff.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, seemed to contradict the pope’s own previous statements when he said that Benedict, growing up in Bavaria during World War II, “never, never, never” belonged to the Hitler Youth.
The Holy See has been plagued by a series of PR disasters for much of this Pope’s reign. A lot of these can be traced to idiots in the Vatican Press Office. The Pope has been quite open about his youth. Yes he was a member of the Hitler Youth. It was compulsory in the Third Reich. And yes, he briefly served as a conscripted boy in an anti-aircraft battery before deserting. All of this is a matter of public record which +Benedict has discussed quite openly and even wrote about in his autobiography.
Someone desperately needs to make some changes in the Vatican’s Press Office. And the spokesman who made the above quoted remarks should be reassigned, preferably to a monastery in the Alps.
Christ is risen!
John
Agreed Ad Orientem,
He also says:
“This fact of the Hitler Youth had no role in his life and in his personality,†Father Lombardi said.
Simply not true. It had an historical role and probably heightened his compassion and empathy.
Quite a bit more informed and informative is this from a priest in Jerusalem:
http://www.zenit.org/article-25876?l=english